The Age-Time-Cohort Problem and the Identification of Structural Parameters in Life-Cycle Models

Sam Schulhofer-Wohl

No 575, 2012 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics

Abstract: The standard approach to estimating structural parameters in life-cycle models imposes sufficient assumptions on the data to identify the "age profile" of outcomes, then chooses model parameters so that the model's age profile matches this empirical age profile. I show that the standard approach is both incorrect and unnecessary: incorrect, because it generically produces inconsistent estimators of the structural parameters, and unnecessary, because consistent estimators can be obtained under weaker fewer assumptions. I derive an identification method that avoids the problems of the standard approach and illustrate its benefits in a simple model of consumption inequality.

Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The age‐time‐cohort problem and the identification of structural parameters in life‐cycle models (2018)
Working Paper: The Age-Time-Cohort Problem and the Identification of Structural Parameters in Life-Cycle Models (2017)
Working Paper: The age-time-cohort problem and the identification of structural parameters in life-cylce models (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:red:sed012:575

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